The time is drawing near for IRDC 2012 – the International Roguelike Development Conference, being held this year in London on the 2nd and 3rd of June. IRDC has historically been a unique opportunity for developers and roguelikes fans to meet up, make presentations, and discuss relevant topics. This year’s event follows up on previous successful conferences in Berlin, Geneva and Visby. The London gathering promises talks from roguelike legends such as Jeff Lait (POWDER) and DarkGod (ToME4), and a live recording of the Roguelike Radio podcast.

Those interested in attending should sign up now, and look into travel and accommodation soon (London prices aren’t always cheap). Any questions should be put up on the wiki, or directed to Darren Grey.

25 people have signed up so far. Presentations promised include:
– “The Roguelike Rennaissance” by Darren Grey
– “The Single Hit Point Model” by Darren Grey
– “Why Darren is Wrong About Single Hit Points” by Ido Yehieli
– “Developing for Mobile Devices” by Bjorn Ritzl
– “Porting POWDER: A Brief History” by Jeff Lait
– “Stonesoup Survey Presentation” by Johanna Ploog
– “Roguelikes as contrasted to the Commercial Games Industry” by Connagh Muldoon

The podcast is dedicated to weekly reviews of recent roguelike games and general discussion about the genre. This week it covers Ido Yehieli’s Cardinal Quest, with some talk on how a good UI can improve a roguelike game. Next week’s episode shall be focussed on Desktop Dungeons.

Mingos: On September the 19th, the first ever Annual Roguelike Release Party took place. Its result: over a dozen interesting releases, including new games and updates to existing ones. A rather exotic ARRP release was Umbra, a C++ framework written by me and Jice. We’re here to have a small chat about Umbra and its connection to the roguelike world. Continue reading →

In many communities a survey of people active five years ago will turn up maybe one or two that are still around.
Yet when I read the old roguelike usenet postings I recognize the majority of the poster’s names.

Since the start of development, GH2 has used mostly the same game system as GH1, but that changed in v0.600. The character rules have been streamlined. The number of skills has been chopped from 43 to 25. Conversation is no longer a mandatory skill, and the rumor system has been reworked. It should be easier to create distinct characters with a strong concept, rather than having every character end up the same.

Another addition is that you can now let your summons and allies handleyour spare weapons and items allowing for many new strategies and a relative harmless way of testing if an unidentified item is hazardous.

Anything from later than the First Age has been removed. No more Rings of Power, Grishnakh, Anduril, Saruman, Witch-King, etc. There are some new uniques, artifacts and ego-items (and some just renamed). There are also new item sets, and some reworked artifacts.

The basic premise of the scenario is the story of a lowly Khazad guard, who fails catastrophicly in his duties. Instead of being exiled from the Clan, however, Lord Kandros Fir gives him a chance to redeem himself by drafting him into the service of the 133rd K.R.A.G. (Khazad Resource Acquisition Group).

The story takes place in the early days of the Khazad exodus (exile?) to the the Surface. At this time, the Khazad still have some holdings in the Underhome, and just starting to explore and colonize the Surface World.